The Shelter Cat ‘Flood’ (or why cat laws fail)

Cat laws in various forms are often purported as the secret to managing skyrocketing shelter populations. If only all the ‘irresponsible’ cat owners identified and desexed their cats … the thinking goes … we wouldn’t need shelters.

With so many cities in Australia now passing cat laws, why aren’t more cities also boasting that they’ve stopped killing cats?

The answer is the Shelter Cat ‘Flood’.

There are four populations of cats in Australia.

Owned cats are generally desexed and identified. They enter shelters in relatively small numbers, sometimes by being lost, and sometimes because of genuine reasons which mean that the owner can’t keep them.

These cats are the least likely to die in a shelter, as they are generally very friendly and well-kept.

‘Irresponsibly’ owned cats enter shelters in higher numbers, but their population is relatively small. Often referred to as ‘the last five percent of owners’, they are the cats who are undesexed, irresponsibly bred and/or abandoned on a whim.

These cats are at risk in a shelter, as they often need some rehabilitation and vet care to be made adoptable.

Community cats are the population of cats who live alongside humans, but who don’t have a single ‘official’ owner. They may visit one or many homes in the neighbourhood, or they may congregate around food sources such as industrial sites, retail and restaurant locations, or rubbish tips. They rely on humans, so are often trapped and brought into shelters by well-meaning people.

They are at extremely high risk at a shelter, as they are often shy or aggressive towards strangers.

Feral cats are the population of cats who do not require the support of humans to survive. They are shy and rarely seen, and tend to be the unowned cats found in rural and regional locations. Although the population is extremely large (several times larger than the other cat populations), as they don’t often cross paths with humans, they are rarely brought into shelters and make up only a small fraction of the shelter population.

These cats are practically always killed in shelters.

Cat laws mandate that cats are microchipped, registered or desexed.

Owned cats are relatively uneffected by cat laws. Their owners are already ‘doing the right thing’.

‘Irresponsibly’ owned cats are generally the target of cat laws, despite only being a small part of the cat population. In some instances, having new laws will make ‘irresponsible’ cat owners start doing the right thing. However, the umbrella of cat laws has a big hole in it – that is ‘irresponsible’ people by definition, tend not to care about complying with laws. There is also a segment of the ‘irresponsibly’ owned cat population, which are people simply too poor to afford the surgery. New laws do not help them comply.

Community cats are effected negatively by cat laws. As they are now non-compliant to being microchipped/registered/desexed, as they have no owners to help them comply, they are now a target of animal control. These cats will be impounded. There is also evidence that after cat laws pass more cats, both unowned and pet, are trapped and sometimes abused by cat-haters, simply because these people feel validated in enforcing these laws.

As the community cat population is extremely large, the net effect overall is an increase in shelter impoundments. And as these cats are often not universally friendly, most will not be able to be placed as housepets and will be killed.

Feral cats tend to be uneffected by cat laws, as they don’t live in areas where companion animal laws are enforced.

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While increasing shelter impoundments is a terrible outcome of cat laws, there is a much more devastating one. Cat laws take a large amount of infrastructure to enforce. New cat pound facilities need to be built and maintained. Extra council staff need to be employed. Administration systems need to be developed and there needs to be a community awareness drive. Most of these expenses are ongoing and total many tens of millions of dollars. Tens of millions of dollars that is then not being invested in programs that are proven to reduce shelter intakes and killing.

Note: MANDATING cat laws aren’t the same as PROMOTING microchipping, registration or desexing – all of which are a very good thing for cats. When we make it a requirement that cat owners comply with a law, we at the same time make it ‘illegal’ for a cat not to comply. This means an extremely large part of the cat population (the population without an owner) is now ‘illegal’ and a target for impoundment and abuse.

Community cat desexing programs (sometimes called ‘TNR’) are programs which desex unowned and free-roaming cats, rather than take them into shelters where they will likely be killed.

By targeting the segment of the cat population most likely to enter shelters and be killed there, and implementing programs which keep them out of shelters, the outcomes for cats is improved immensely.

The other segments of the cat population (owned cats and irresponsibly owned cats) will still continue to enter shelters, however as the overall load is significantly reduced, shelters will be much better placed to care for them.

The idea that shelters can kill enough community cats, that they will no longer exist is not realistic. The population is self-sustaining, number in the hundreds of thousands and are ‘restocked’ by the feral population.

Ignoring the evidence that it is not a possible outcome, even if we did believe we could kill our way to not killing cats, it would not be an ethical position for pet lovers to green-light the killing of hundreds of thousands of human-dependant cats for our convenience.

Shelters should not be in the business of killing cats.

How shelters treat cats – all cats, not just the cute and adoptable ones – demonstrates their commitment to lifesaving. When an animal shelter isn’t fighting to protect all cats from harm, it reflects a fundamental mission failure.

At the very least, shelters should be using the most effective solution – the one that does the least harm. The biggest harm of cat laws, is that they encourage and increase the impoundment and killing of cats (while claiming to reduce the impoundment and killing of cats). At the same time they divert tens of million dollars of resources into efforts that will never be successful.

Community cat desexing programs are the only humane and acceptable reaction to high rates of shelter killing.